Gallery: Snapshots from Bottling Day at the Trumer Pils Brewery in Berkeley

View from Above

The brewery where Trumer is made in Austria is about 4 times the size of the California brewery, and makes about 60,000 barrels a year, but only about half of that is pilsner. In Berkeley, the Trumer brewery produces about 25,000 barrels a year.

Lars Larson

Larson arrived in Berkeley in 2004 and spent about 8 months putting the brewery together. There was a defunct brewery (Golden Pacific) at the brewery's current location, but the Trumer team needed to pour a new floor, tear out the bottle shop, add new machines, and redo the wastewater management system. Larson traveled to the Trumer brewery in Austria to talk about the recipe, the ingredients, and the methods that make Trumer Pils what it is. They did a bunch of test brewing before they first released beer in August 2004.

Hops

The hops come from growers co-ops in Austria and Germany. Trumer Pils is made with Aurora hops for bittering and Saaz hops for aroma.

Grain Silos

In each container, there's about 38,000 pounds of grain, which is stored in these silos before use. The brewery goes through four containers a month.

Fill 'Er Up!

The empty bottles arrive in sixpack carriers, and go down a ramp before being pulled from the container. After rinsing and a double-evacuation process to remove all air, the bottles are filled, crowned, and labeled before being inserted back into the cardboard sixpack carriers.

Quickly Down the Line

The bottle shop at Trumer processes about 330 bottles a minute.

All Boxed Up and Ready to Go

We asked Larson about the brewery's choice to package their beer in green bottles, and he said they went with tradition. "There was a culture of the international pilsner being in the green bottle," he answered. To avoid skunking, he recommended purchasing pilsner in cardboard 12-packs or cases, which are protected from the light until you open them.

Kegs

Two thirds of the Trumer production is draft beer, and their kegging system can fill 60 kegs and hour. A full keg weights 162 pounds, so lift with your legs!

The Finished Product

Larson likes these narrow glasses because they highlight the color and clarity of the beer, and help retain the fine carbonation of the beer as well as support the foamy head.